Optimize Your Mix: Five Lessons from Email Marketing
I am frequently approached by senior marketers – from across industries – who confide in me that they are grappling with how to achieve an optimal ‘marketing mix’ in light of all the available new media and traditional media. They want to build on their history of success in one medium or technology platform (e.g. mobile, print, web) and leverage all marketing media.
As someone who has seen many marketing and technology trends over the last 13 years, I have identified some consistently powerful lessons that, while drawn from permission-based email marketing, can be applied to improve marketing results across all platforms. These five lessons include:
1. Always Deliver Relevant Content and Segment
Technology has progressed to the point where recipients can choose key components of the marketing information they are to receive – including method of contact, content, timing and frequency. When customers and prospects have control over what marketing information they want, when they receive it and how it arrives, they are dramatically more likely to act upon a marketing campaign’s call-to-action.
2. Collect Your Customers’ Permission: They Demand It
Because gathering permission helps marketers build a positive brand experience and engage with customers, it has become a fundamental to all marketing campaigns – online and offline. The Do Not Call List is another demonstration that securing customer permission is every marketer’s obligation and responsibility. Furthermore, Canadian privacy legislation (PIPEDA) mandates permission is gathered.
3. Test. Measure. Test. Measure.
There are four key lessons regarding measuring and testing:
• Campaign metrics need to be tied to specific business goals at the onset of any campaign. For example, ‘brand reach’ can be linked to the number of new subscribers and successful initiatives to build referrals.
• Use campaign-specific and company-established benchmarks in addition to industry-wide stats.
• As technology and campaigns progress, the meaning and importance of metrics evolves. For example, at one time, email open rates had been held out as the key measure of campaign success. However, with image-blocking software and the popularity of preview panes, the focus has switched to achieving specific conversions.
• As marketing technologies have evolved to allow for variable delivery options, so too has the ability to test several component parts of each marketing campaign. In email marketing, that means the ability to test subject lines, copy, personalization and the specific offer.
4. Focus on “Relative Time” Rather Than on “Absolute Time”
Marketers have long recognized that timing can make or break a campaign. The challenge however is the tendency to seek a ‘perfect time’. Throughout the year, email marketing studies are published that point to a particular day of the week and/or time-of-day as ‘the best time’ to reach out to customers and prospects.
However, because marketing is about establishing, nurturing and enriching relationships, choosing the right times to optimize a campaign’s results involves addressing several items such as: when the previous communication was delivered, the nature of the communication and the time-sensitivity of the message.
5. Integrate with Business Applications
Whether you are leveraging call centres, point-of-sale tracking or any other media, integrate the flow of appropriate data into business applications so that the effectiveness of each campaign can be tied to key metrics such as revenues and acquisition costs. One of the reasons that email, for example, is poised to become an even more powerful marketing tool is because it can be easily integrated into business platforms such as Customer Relationship Management systems and Content Management Systems.
As senior marketers, we are all working towards one common goal: creating and sustaining a positive experience to acquire and retain customers. These lessons, drawn from permission-based email marketing, allow every marketer to harness and optimize their marketing mix.
I welcome hearing any lessons that have helped you optimize your marketing mix - share here on the CMA Blog, or feel free to contact me directly at president@thindata.com.
